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Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

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Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#131

Post by lifestudent »

Drop out of school sooner...like after freshman year...make sure you live very close to campus for the next few years after dropping out...spend the day working on your own projects with friends around campus (make sure you do team projects)...and the nights chilling at student clubs and meeting the motivated folks around campus.

Learn through your own individual and group projects..and keep up with industry trends...be sure to travel around (to other schools among other places) and meet other folks that have a youthful spirit.

People around you will not like your unique lifestyle...but then again, they also will not have enough money to pay off the debt for the lifestyle they say you should have (go to school, invest in a home, etc.)

Any well-defined path...no matter how prestigious...will not lead to entrepreneurial success; success comes from finding/developing a new path; blaze your own trail

Be wary of things that you "Ought to do" or "Should do"...they usually cause issues (credit: Carol Bartz for the last line)

Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#133

Post by mattmaroon »

fallentimes wrote: post #124
mattmaroon wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You like sports a hell of a lot more than I do if you would trade unlimited cash for the joy of watching games. Also, it's an almanac so you could only look at the results when you needed cash.

I guess as long it was as needed almanac I'd be OK. If I was auto-infused with all sports predictions & knowledge I don't know if I could do it.

Well, the trick would be to just start watching the sports that didn't quite make it into the almanac. Snowmobiling ftw.

Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#134

Post by alnayyir »

unalone wrote: post #36
jhancock wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don't waste your college years" precisely...two chicks at the same time. don't blow it. College is the absolute best time to achieve this with just a bottle of vodka instead of needing to become a millionaire.

Am I allowed to disagree and say that I'm one of the rare males who doesn't find the prospect of sex remotely interesting unless I really care about the girl? I've tried getting shitfaced and hooking up, and even at my drunkest I find the prospect entirely repulsive. As a freshman: I'm not really into the whole "college experience" thing. I've been in better situations before. A friend and I are making our start-up,…

Yeah, I'm the same exact way. I've had casual sex a few times, and felt repulsed and depressed to an extreme degree for the next few days after.

It bothers me greatly and the memories of the casual sex alone freaking kill me when they surface.

It doesn't help that I'm a college drop-out, have no family around, and most of my friends are distant now. And single. And don't know to meet people.

Fuck I need to figure out a hobby that involves interacting with other people.

Actually, I think that'll be my next ask reddit/yc posts.

Maybe a targeted question like that will work.

Either way, yeah, I'm the same way. I have to at least care about her to enjoy it at all. Interestingly, the girl I enjoyed sex with the most, was a virgin when we started dating. The reason she was so good was her enthusiasm and that she displayed how much she cared for me even in bed.

It just magnified the quality of the whole experience.

Hrm. Nostalgia is killing me. I'd better slough off to bed.

Good luck in sharing this weakness we both seem to have.

Cheers mate.

Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#136

Post by unalone »

blackguardx wrote: post #128
unalone wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I'm looking at a transfer; at the same time, my co-founder and I are pushing to have a sellable product as quickly as possible. We're both freshmen who went to advanced programs in high school and are finding college to be a bit of a drag, so either way things will hopefully get better.

Where are you going to school? How are you paying for it? Are you sure that you want to go to college? I don't really advocate dropping out because a B.S. can be a good safety net in today's society. If you don't find college a rewarding experience, you should probably do something about it. College costs a lot of money and you need to maximize your investment. I suppose you can slug it out at a place where you don't…

Right now I'm at The College of New Jersey. It's an absolutely top-rate public school, and my parents are paying for it. It's a good college, but it's mind-numbingly slow. I already have a general idea of what I want to do, so a lot of the introductory classes seem pointless and dull. I also feel really guilty about using money that's not mine to take classes that I don't feel will affect what I do later in life.

Right now, I'm in that sort of "isolation." I have friends, and a bit of a social life on campus, but the whole of it really doesn't interest me. The problem that I and my cofounder have is that we both attended handpicked programs a summer ago, with an absolutely top-notch set of students from across the state. (I went for the arts, he went for the sciences.) Both of us are finding college a let-down after the intense 8-hour-day programs that those were, hence us starting up.

As for college: I really don't think leaving and never returning would be a good idea. But we're applying to YCombinator this summer, and we figure that one way or another it might be worth a year away from college to try our hands at entrepreneurship. We've got a good idea and a good product; worst comes to worst, we'll go back to college after a year much wiser and much more understanding of what we want to do with our lives.

Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#137

Post by unalone »

tdavis wrote: post #44
unalone wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I allowed to disagree and say that I'm one of the rare males who doesn't find the prospect of sex remotely interesting unless I really care about the girl? I've tried getting shitfaced and hooking up, and even at my drunkest I find the prospect entirely repulsive. As a freshman: I'm not really into the whole "college experience" thing. I've been in better situations before. A friend and I are making our start-up,…

While I would not call it "entirely repulsive," the act of random sex has always been far less fulfilling for me. We are also some of the rare males who consider it possible to have "bad" sex. I collectively refer to us as: Connoisseurs ;) That being said, I wouldn't call the average college student immature. The older I get, the more I realize that the line between "maturity" and "immaturity" is incredibly fine and…

My problem isn't with students that are completely into casual sex. In fact, that's what I was imagining: people who are completely open and honest about what they want.

Instead, I find that most college students are either in denial or they let themselves get carried too far. The people here are always in it to get back at a boyfriend or they're too drunk to realize just what they're doing. That's what I can't stand.

I think that people who worry about livings and books are often just as bad, to be fair. I switched out of an English major because I realized that the people I knew going for English were often really out-of-sync with the real world and were really unpleasant people. I moved to a major that had a few people who were really with it, and formed a group there.

I've never seen American Beauty. Would you recommend it?

Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#139

Post by unalone »

alnayyir wrote: post #134
unalone wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I allowed to disagree and say that I'm one of the rare males who doesn't find the prospect of sex remotely interesting unless I really care about the girl? I've tried getting shitfaced and hooking up, and even at my drunkest I find the prospect entirely repulsive. As a freshman: I'm not really into the whole "college experience" thing. I've been in better situations before. A friend and I are making our start-up,…

Yeah, I'm the same exact way. I've had casual sex a few times, and felt repulsed and depressed to an extreme degree for the next few days after. It bothers me greatly and the memories of the casual sex alone freaking kill me when they surface. It doesn't help that I'm a college drop-out, have no family around, and most of my friends are distant now. And single. And don't know to meet people. Fuck I need to figure out…

Best of luck with finding a hobby! Tell me if you post it on Reddit: I'd like to see the answers.

I'm still a virgin, because - somehow - I still believe in abstinence until marriage. No clue how long that will last. And I find it really sad that people tend to become cynical about lust and sex and romance. Thanks to that, the best relationship I had started with the girl being with another (pretty awful) guy: we got really interested in each other at least in part because it was so clandestine at first, so larger-than-life.

And I don't know if it's because of youth or not, but I loathe people who are very into romance and very against any sort of physical contact. I think that's like the exact reverse of casual sex and it's just as bad. There needs to be a balance.

Cheers.

Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

#140

Post by tdavis »

unalone wrote: post #137
tdavis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would not call it "entirely repulsive," the act of random sex has always been far less fulfilling for me. We are also some of the rare males who consider it possible to have "bad" sex. I collectively refer to us as: Connoisseurs ;) That being said, I wouldn't call the average college student immature. The older I get, the more I realize that the line between "maturity" and "immaturity" is incredibly fine and…

My problem isn't with students that are completely into casual sex. In fact, that's what I was imagining: people who are completely open and honest about what they want. Instead, I find that most college students are either in denial or they let themselves get carried too far. The people here are always in it to get back at a boyfriend or they're too drunk to realize just what they're doing. That's what I can't stand…

Oh, well if you're referring to petty, childish stuff like that, I have no argument. Telling the difference can be hard sometimes, so all I can really recommend is that you keep an open mind. You seem to be doing that, though.

American Beauty is in my top 10 movies of all time; I recommend it highly!

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